Reporter: So, Mr. Presley, what do you do every morning when you wake up? Elvis Presley: Simple. I get out of bed, get dressed, and make a Peanut Butter-Banana-Bacon Sandwich.

— The King of Rock N Roll in interview

Bizarre Taste in Food is when a character, main or minor, does something irregular to their meal that becomes a defining trait. Note that this has nothing to do with the viewer or players' taste, but the characters who witness it.

Say the hero wanders into an Adventure Town, stops at restaurant, and orders something. Next to him sits an eccentric soon to be party member putting an insane amount of jelly on his steak, or hot sauce in his milkshake. When asked, the person will usually respond, "It makes it taste better!" It soon becomes a character's defining trait and does something similar in every town. May also pertain to Long-Running Shows.

Differs from Cordon Bleugh Chef in the sense that the food is not inedible because of the cook. It's when the character does something minor to the food that completely transforms it. The food doesn't have to be particularly disgusting, just something other characters find to be so.

Usually happens with the Big Eater of the group. Typically after doing so, the Cloudcuckoolander will try the food and proclaim that it tastes better, much to the chagrin of the others.

Not to be confused with Bizarre Foods, although it does lead to each other.

Examples:

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Anime & Manga

Bleach: The Cloud Cuckoo Lander Orihime is infamous in-universe for the very strange combinations she makes of what would normally be completely ordinary ingredients. In one of the early episodes, Orihime is talking about strange food she eats. She constantly makes odder and odder additions to food, such as buying beans, and jam and leeks all together. Even her friend Tatsuki thinks it's strange. As a result, almost no-one wants to try her food because it sounds so weird everyone assumes it will taste disgusting. Those brave (or crazy) enough to try discover that she's actually an excellent cook and those weird combinations actually taste wonderful.

In Code Geass, Cecile Croomy can't cook to save her life, and makes odd dishes such as adding blueberry jam to onigiri. Everyone politely accepts, then decides to secretly dispose of it.

Koushiro/Izzy of Digimon Adventure. He enjoys Taichi/Tai and Hikari/Kari's mother's cooking and once mentioned his favorite toppings for eggs being mustard and jelly beans.

In Gintama, one of Toushiro Hijikata's defining character traits is his love of mayonnaise, which he puts on absolutely everything, even coffee. It's made worse by the fact that he uses so much of it that the food becomes completely unrecognizable. Everybody finds it disgusting, but he can't seem to grasp that and has presumptuously garnished the food of others without their consent.

Gintama (at least in anime) also features a few supporting characters with weird food addictions, usually of some sort of relation to Hijikata, just for comparison. As such Okita Mitsuba is shown to add increadibly spicy sauce in all of her food and cooking, and Kyuubei Arc featured a guy, who competed (Literally. It was a competition) with Hijikata during a meal in that he added as much ketchup in his food as did Hijikata mayonnaise. And this was subverted, too, because the guy revealed to actually hate ketchup but use it still.

Van from GUN×SWORD orders the cheapest thing on the menu and every condiment the place has. One can only imagine how the resulting mess tastes.

In Magic of Stella, Shiina seems to have a knack in making weird concoctions of different non-alcoholic drinks, often just to entertain herself.

Magellan, the chief warden of Impel Down from One Piece, eats poisoned food, justified because such fare fuels his lethal poison-based Devil's Fruit powers, but he has clearly developed a taste for the stuff. Unfortunately, while he is immune to poison, it gives him terrible diarrhea, and given the fact that he's a Big Eater (being a big guy), he has to spend about ten hours a day in the bathroom as a result.

Fuji from The Prince of Tennis is known for eating Wasabi rolls, and drinking Innui's ghastly sports drinks without much hassle.

Genjyo Sanzo from Saiyuki once admitted to putting mayonnaise on his ramen, weirding out his companions. Due to the weirdness and the circumstanesnote they were discussing food while heading towards the season's Big Bad's castle for a rematch, their first battle having turned disastrous of this revelation, his love for mayonnaise tends to be exaggerated by the fandom.

In Vividred Operation, Akane Isshiki carries a tube of mayonnaise around with her and puts it on everything. She manages to convert a few of her friends as well.

Comic Books

Marvel Comics: Crusader (who's actually a Skrull who's Gone Native) eats a combination of strawberries, kiwi fruit and pickles that resembles a favored Skrull fruit. This turns into a Spot the Imposter when he sees Hank Pym serve himself the same combo.

Asterix the Legionary: When sampling the Roman army's food (wheat, cheese and bacon, cooked together to save time), Asterix's entire multinational unit tastes one spoonful and violently rejects it. All except the Briton, who sincerely loves the stuff.

Even worse in Asterix and the Britons, where warm beer and boar boiled in mint sauce is considered a culinary abomination (even the legionaries threatened with being boiled and thrown to the lions with mint sauce protest that it's horrible- the poor beasts).

In a Peanuts strip, Linus is eating candy; he gives Lucy one, which leads to this exchange:

Lucy: BLEAH! What in the world are those? Linus(nonchalantly, reaching into the bag): Sour marshmallows!

The title character from the comic strip Curtis is of the Big Eater variety, often making sandwich combinations that squick the rest of his family.

In Zippy the Pinhead, Zippy enjoys Ding Dongs with taco sauce. Creator Bill Griffith recounted how he had the combo available, as a joke, at a book signing - and gave away a lot of them!

Dennis the Menace (UK): In "Just Desserts" Angel Face is the only kid to finish her plate of boiled figs without complaint.

In Bloom County, Milquetoast the cockroach loves to eat rotten, discarded food and other oddities. For example, before enjoying a Ding Dong, he asks Opus to rub it in the gunk under the refrigerator. In another strip, he recites a poem to himself while going to sleep.

As I slumber, I think I'll number my favorite foods, short of lumber! Pickled eels! Last week's veal! Banana peels well congealed!

Fan Works

The Punishment: It's revealed Wheatley was eating toothpaste before he was reunited with Chell.

RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse: Trixie, in spades. For example, she's been known to impale a whole apple on a carrot and drench both in caramel, and she prefers sauerkraut on her pancakes.

One of her favorites - hot chocolate with chili powder mixed in - actually enjoys some popularity in real life, to the point that Hershey sells premixed powder in some markets.

Harry's New Mum mentions that Dawn once ordered a jalapeno, grapefruit and vinegar pizza.

Films — Live-Action

In UHF, Weird Al's character puts a hot dog weiner into a twinkie, puts cheese whiz on it, and dunks it in his drink. The Twinkie-Weiner sandwich is still the Trademark Favorite Food of Al's in real life, although he uses vegetarian linkettes nowadays.

The Breakfast Club: During lunch Allison removes the pimento loaf from her sandwich and adds Pixy Stix and mashed up Cap'n Crunch. (Also her sandwich uses one slice of white bread & one slice wheat.)

Hudson Hawk. While Eddie is in Italy he goes to a restaurant and orders "Fettuccini con funghi porcini" (pasta with mushrooms). He also asks for a bottle of ketchup, to the waiter's dismay.

Elf: Having been raise by elves, Buddy's idea of a well-balanced diet consists of the four main food groups: candy, candy canes, candy corns, and syrup, as elves love sugar. In fact, Buddy adds syrup to almost anything he eats, such as spaghetti; later still, when Buddy fixes himself breakfast, he cooks a plate of spaghetti, and tops it with maple syrup, chocolate syrup, M&Ms, marshmallows, and chocolate Pop-Tarts.

The Blues Brothers: Elwood Blues's preferred food is dry white toast, one slice of which makes up an entire meal for him.

Much like his cartoon counterpart, Shaggy in the live-action Scooby-Doo movies has some really weird cravings. In the first film, we see him eat an eggplant burger with chocolate sauce.

Literature

The aliens in the Roswell High series put Tabasco sauce on almost all their food and combine flavors in ways that would make Earthlings vomit. This was carried over into the TV show based on the books (see below).

In the novel The Pack, the main character makes a new friend and goes out to lunch with him and her other friend. He orders a hamburger and when asked how he would like it, he replies "raw". There is some arguing with the waitress about health codes before the issue is settled.

Bartholomew Stiggins in the Thursday Next books. He is known to eat beetles and raw meat, among other things. Justified because he's a Neanderthal (a product of a cloning project).

Sarah: who likes Ketchup and tonic water, among other odd combinations

Antimony: who likes Captain Crunch on cold pizza.

The three villains in Fantastic Mr. Fox are Villainous Gluttons, but each is a Picky Eater who eats the same thing three times a day, and each is bizarre: Farmer Boggis eats three chickens smothered in dumplings for each meal (and three for dessert at dinner), Bunce eats homemade donuts stuffed with mashed goose livers, and the beanpole-thin Farmer Bean doesn't eat any solid food at all, drinking gallons of fiery, home-brewed, alcoholic apple cider.

The Lightning Thief starts out with Percy and Grover sitting on a bus while a bully throws pieces of her peanut butter and ketchup sandwich at them.

Ancillary Mercy: Translator Zeiat's beverage of choice is... fish sauce. After all, it's a liquid, and it tastes good. While she is human (almost), she was grown by Starfish Aliens to serve as a diplomat, and they seem not to have taught her the human concept of condiments.

In the The Iron Teeth web serial Blacknail the goblin apparently likes to eat food that is slimy, and even somewhat rotten.

Discworld: The student wizards who work at Unseen University's High Energy Magic Building, being college nerds, seem to live on nothing but pizza. Unlike Roundworld students, theirs tends to have really bizarre topping combos, e.g. banana pudding with kippers.

The Igors also have bizarre taste in food, considering that one made a tuna, spaghetti and jam sandwich for Nutt in Unseen Academicals. Glenda, the resident Supreme Chef, gets Derailed for Details by contemplating whether there's any kind of jam that would make this actually taste good.

Live-Action TV

Gimme a Break!: One time, Nell accidentally burns a steak black, which Carl then eats, happily saying, "You finally cooked it the way I like it!"

This trope is played with in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The Ferengis cannot believe that humans enjoy root beer, and occasionally insult other Ferengis by implying that they enjoy root beer.

The Eleventh Doctor's taste for fish sticks dipped in custard in Doctor Who. The first time he tried them post-regeneration trauma was playing havoc with his taste buds, but he's also seen enjoying them in later episodes, such as "The Power of Three".

In an episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Peralta mentions that on Thanksgiving he sits by himself and eats spoonfuls of mayo, with peanuts sprinkled in.

Captain Holt: That's revolting.

Fringe: Observers will cover their food in hot pepper and douse it in hot sauce before eating it.

Subverted and invoked in an episode of The Voyage Of The Mimi. One character prepares a sandwich and describes all the ingredients in it. It's so disgusting it makes the person she's talking to throw up. It turns out she wasn't really planning on eating it - she just thought that inducing vomiting might be a good way to help the other character stop feeling seasick.

In The Weird Al Show, Al sometimes goes to his kitchen for a "Nutrition Break", in which he makes things like split-pea cookies. Most of his creations contain non-edible things, however, which may fall under Extreme Omnivore instead.

In NCIS, Timothy McGee's sister, Sarah, enjoys pizza with pickles, Tabasco sauce, peanut butter, and no cheese. This becomes highly relevant to a murder case in which Sarah is the suspect: someone had spiked the jar of peanut butter she carries with her, causing her to believe she had killed a petty officer.

In "The Sniper", while the entire camp is pinned down by sniper fire, Radar mentions having a peculiar metabolism, saying that he needs to eat regularly, or, "Everything solid in my body turns to water". Under the cover of darkness, Hawkeye and Frank think they're ambushing the sniper in the Mess Tent, only to discover Radar had snuck in to fix himself a rather unusual sandwich.

Hawkeye: You'd risk your life for a ketchup on rye?!

Radar: With butter and lettuce!

On the subject of unusual sandwiches, in another episode, Hawkeye fixes him, B.J., and Father Mulcahy some sandwiches, by using peanut butter, jelly, lettuce, mayonaise, ham, mayonaise, turkey, mayonaise, cheese, and more mayonaise.

In another episode, Charles starts dating a Korean B-girl, who apparently likes to spread vanilla pudding on her meatloaf.

In the episode "Big Mac", the 4077th is prepared for a visit from Douglas MacArthur, and is told that the General eats the exact same meals as the troops do, to which Hawkeye remarks, "Do he like his ice cream on top of his beef stew like we do?"

When telling Radar to go to the mess hall to get oatmeal raisin cookies, Colonel Potter reminds him that the ones he likes are the ones with the stale raisins.

Klinger once mentions having a fondness for garlic pie.

Most everyone at the 4077th does not like the chow in the mess hall, but in one episode, a visiting surgeon from the 8063rd claims it's good, saying that the food at his camp is bad. (That's where Hawkeye currently is, although when he comes back at the end, all he has to say about the place is that everyone thought he was boring.)

In one episode of Green Acres, Eb's cousin Walter, who is a bartender, is able to identify the citizens of Hooterville by their Drink Order, and remembers Hank Kimball for his mix of scotch and goat's milk.

Sesame Street: Just about everything Oscar the Grouch eats falls into this territory. In fact, just look at some of the menu items at the grouch eatery Bad Eats' Don't Drop Inn from Follow That Bird:

In the Full House episode where Jessie's greek cousin Starveros comes to visit, he orders a pizza topped with double feta cheese and lamb guts.

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Charlie has bizarre eating habits. He eats cat food as a sedative. An early episode has him making a Grilled Charlie, which is a toasted sandwich with chocolate, peanut butter, butter and cheese. He says his favorite food is "milk steak," which his friends have never heard of, but might be a steak boiled in milk. He requests "raw jellybeans" at a restaurant. In a movie theater he eats spaghetti out of a ziplock bag. One episode implies that wolf hair and newspaper might be found in his stool.

Exalted has a charm that allows a character to eat anything for sustenance, with the risk of developing a weird palate.

Video Games

In Uno Undercover Agent a seven- or eight-year-old makes lunch for her family of four. When her mother says that the sandwiches are delicious and asks what's in them, the kid replies "Mayonnaise, sardines, tomato and half a stick of gum."

In the Nancy Drew games, recurring character Professor Hotchkiss is fond of things like roast beef with caramel sauce or curried waffle sandwiches.

Leon from Rune Factory4 likes eating poisonous food or dishes made from poisonous food, like Rainbow Trout. He says that they are, and taste, "more interesting" than other, non-poisonous things.

The "Sinner's Sandwich" from Deadly Premonition contains the unlikely combination of turkey, strawberry jam, and breakfast cereal. York is initially convinced that it would only ever be eaten as punishment... until he tries one. A number of fans seem to like it, too.

In Suikoden V, Luserina Barrows is so outstandingly competent, loyal and morally upstanding (not to mention attractive,) that your army's detective will investigate her to find what sort of character flaw she's inherited from her slimy and buffoonish father. He finds that she... eats cake with salt.

Digimon World: You know those piles of poop that your Digimon leaves behind if you fail to take him to the bathroom in time? They make nice little (or not so little) snacks for Numemon and Sukamon. Granted, these are creatures made of fecal matter.

In Fire Emblem Awakening, the Avatar absolutely loves bear meat. A male Avatar's Supports with Frederick are centered around helping him develop a taste for bear meat. Chrom also enjoys bear meat, though not quite to the same extent as the Avatar.

Mortimer from Newheimburg likes his pizza loaded down with every topping, including breadsticks.

Emily from Questionable Content, after being told that Coffee of Doom's idea of a banana smoothie is a banana that's been smashed with a hammer, is disappointed to order and receive an ordinary banana smoothie. Eventually Faye gets out a hammer and a banana...

On another occasion, Emily had nothing but frozen peas for lunch. This came in handy when another character got a black eye and needed a cold pack.

Inverted with Edith of Alice and the Nightmare, as Alice finds it bizarre that Edith's taste in desserts (vanilla ice cream) is so mundane.

In Heartcore, Amethyst likes barbecue sauce, which isn't strange in and of itself. What is strange is the fact that she loves it so much, she'll drink it straight out of the bottle.

Web Original

It is yet undiscovered just how The Nostalgia Critic can eat sugar-frosted burrito-stuffed, lard-filled, liposuction-butter hotpockets all the time and still stay as skinny as he does.

An initially not by choice version in the "Stop Bullying Now" campaign. Brick dumps chocolate pudding in the macaroni and cheese on the tray of his favorite victim, Milton. After several other characters tell Brick to back off, Milton samples the tainted mac 'n' cheese and remarks that the chocolate pudding actually improves the mac, humiliating Brick. After Brick and his cronies leave, Raven, one of the characters to stand up to Brick, congratulates Milton on his burn and offers to share her own lunch with him, to which he gleefully eats another spoonful of his own and says "Actually I was serious. This is way better."

It appears to be the norm at Kakos Industries to eat a number of wild animals such as bear arms and sheep fetuses served on a bed of seeds. Not a single average meal for catering their events has been listed yet.

Western Animation

Apparently, Danny and Tucker like "Exotic" milkshakes. In reality, they are just milkshakes that just makes someone in hearing range sick (Example: Kiwi Fudge with Cheese Puffs and Bacon).

One truly bizarre example was Irma's birthday, where Michelangelo brought ice cream pizzas with such flavors as garlic-vanilla and anchovy-butterscotch.

One of the books has them get pizza with, among other things, chocolate buttons and some kind of dried fruit. At Splinter's incredulous reaction, one of the Turtles says they made the mistake of letting Michelangelo order. (Meanwhile, another of them is carefully picking the chocolate off his slice.)

Some other characters on the show had odd tastes in pizza toppings. One time Michelangelo got a job at a pizza delivery place called Weird Pizza to make money; the place said it would put any topping on a pizza that a customer requested. (Shredder was actually running the place, hoping to attract the Turtles to it due to their odd tastes). Anyway, Mikey ended up delivering some pizzas with very odd requests, like pickles and ice cream. (To a woman in her third trimester, it seemed.)

Every iteration of Shaggy and Scooby-Doo. From liverwurst and fried chicken sandwiches to peanut butter pizza with anchovies and chocolate sauce. Shaggy once even wanted to put fish food on his sandwich along with the other condiments, but he changed his mind when the goldfish in the tank got angry.

Scrappy also liked some strange things-like ketchup on pancakes and whipped cream on pizza, which even Shaggy and Scooby were weirded out by.

Beetlejuice loves to eat beetles. Along with a brand of candy bar that has them called Good N Buggy.

The Lion King has Timon and Pumba with their taste for insects. In real life, this wouldn't be odd for either species, but is treated as odd in universe.

Moreover, Simba joining them in their insect-eating genuinely does rate as bizarre for a lion.

At one point on Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy, the Kanker Sisters are having ketchup on... roasted marshmallows. Ed's own loves are lampshaded in-universe in an episode where he is grounded and Jimmy is bringing him his favorite dish:

Buster has bizaare tastes. He regularly gets strangely flavored ice cream, with sprinkles of stuff you wonder why they even have as options. Some ice cream flavours he's had include "Chocolate Chicken Crunch," (He doesn't know or care what makes the crunch) "Peppermint Pasta," (Which he claims needs meatballs) and "Rocky Trout" (Chocolate ice cream with almonds and fish sticks)

George's family is Swedish; he enjoys lutefisk. To quote Masochist's Meal: "Essentially, you take a perfectly good fish and let it rot slightly, then soak it in lye and smoke it. Then, you soak it in water to get all the lye out, boil it, and serve it with innocent mashed potatoes which had done nothing to deserve the treatment. The resulting substance often tastes like a science experiment gone tragically wrong."

Starfire from Teen Titans has some pretty wild tastes in food, she does this every so often. One early episode has her drinking mustard straight out of the bottle. In another, she suggests ordering pickles, bananas, and mint frosting on a pizza. This is, however, a Justified example because she is an alien with different taste buds. It doesn't make the combinations of food she eats any less bizarre.

In one episode of Dexter's Laboratory, Dexter requests a peanut butter and bologna sandwich for lunch.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has so many examples. While the horses typically eat human foods (including some that are poisonous to real equines), they have been also seen to eat hay and grass (and a zebra eats hay as well). Then you have Pinkie Pie, who eats hot-sauce–covered cupcakes (Episode 2), burnt-to-a-crisp cupcakes (episode 12), a rainbow (episode 16), and then you have Spike the Dragon, who usually eats gemstones (although dragons do that in this universe), but he also enjoys the infamous "baked bads" in episode 4, which was made of potato chips, soda, lemons, and earthworms baked into muffins (and they made the rest of the town sick). Episode 31 also gives us yet another example. Rarity's parents enjoy Sweetie Belle's cooking, and actually praise her for it. She managed to turn toast into a charred, liquefied mess and burn a glass of juice. That sure says something. And then we have the parasprites from episode 10. They eat any and every sort of food until Twilight Sparkle casts a spell to stop them from doing so - whereupon they start eating everything that isn't food.

Atlantis: The Lost Empire: Mole. When Cookie is serving up dinner, he slops baked beans onto everyone's trays, but refers to it as Caesar salad (for Sweet), escargot (for Audrey) and oriental spring rolls (for Mole). Mole looks at his tray, disappointed, and protests to Audrey that he wanted the escargot, and Audrey shoves her tray at him. Mole abandons the 'spring rolls' and digs into the 'escargot,' even though it's the same greasy food.

In The Little Rascals episode "Beauty Queen for a Day", Porky offers Dolly Van Dumpling a mayonnaise and pickle sandwich. After she refuses, Porky eats the sandwich himself.

In The Smurfs episode "The Grumpy Gremlin", the eponymous gremlin's favorite food is grelch, a relish made from wild onions and garlic that smells pretty foul, likely why the gremlin has no friends (well, that and the fact that he's pretty grumpy) but the gremlin eventually makes friends with a dragon who also loves grelch.

Speaking of musicians, Tiny Tim (the singer, not the other guy) used to eat spaghetti sauce, right out of the jar...

Barbara Ehrenreich, in her book Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream, describes with some degree of awe watching a fellow job-searcher help himself at a buffet to "a mound of lettuce, covered with canned fruit salad, topped by a desiccated gray hamburger patty and dripping with Thousand Island dressing".

Edwardian artist Louis Wain said that his favorite drink was Bovril and soda.

Gerald Ford had a similar lunch order, but preferred A-1 steak sauce on his cottage cheese.

LSU football coach Les Miles has a unique pregame ritual... munching on a few blades of grass plucked from the field (at least where the field is real grass, not the fake stuff). Lampshaded by the man himself in an ESPN commercial in which he drinks a concoction that the narrator calls a "grass smoothie".

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